Extraction… sounds like Eldor is going to extract something from Lilith. And it could be painful, so Viviana might not sit quietly. If Eldor didn’t restrain her legs to the chair’s legs, then she will just desperately charge towards Eldor despite being her torso tied to the chair.

There are two options here:
1: Eldor and Lilith are going to be extracted from the castle and to another location.
2: Eldor is extracting Lilith’s power.
IMO, if he were planning on extracting her power, I think he’d do to her something similar to what he did to San, rather than just expect her to be compliant. Cue the group busting in on them just as they’re about to leave?

Eldor’s surveillance camera thingie has a pretty narrow image. It looks like he only sees Fabius and Arty, and not the whole group of at least nine people that are actually there? That might influence his decision on what to do first.

Looks like: Magic abilities go in at red and come out at blue.
If that’s the case, Lili should think twice to comply if she has a secret plan.
But maybe vivi is disturbing it? Or Lili has foreseen that and protected herself against it? After all she is the master of protection spells…
I don’t think „extraction“ means teleportation. That works without machines. We’ve seen it before.

Extract Lili’s knowledge, probably. Eldor already admitted he can’t learn past a certain page in the book himself. OH and I bet He succeeds in the extraction and casts the spell, which would explain why everyone thinks Lili casts it, if he extracts the knowledge from Lili, he’ll probably cast like her too. Fooling everyone reading the bluestream to see who cast that world-ending spell.

At first I thought Eldor meant extracting Lilith’s power into himself, but then I took a second look and noticed Eldor is holding the sphere he extracted from San. As such, I think he’s going to extract San’s magic from it into Lilith (since she’s standing on presumably the red receiving end of the extraction spell), and this will give Lili the energy required to cast the time suspension shield-breaking spell (which is almost certainly a 10th level spell – given that “an archmage like [their] old headmaster Hel is usually able to cast one or two spells of the eighth level” and that even Eldor can’t break the time suspension shield).

Also, just wanted to say that I just discovered this webcomic last month and have since read it through twice and started recommending it to friends. I can now avidly look forward to each new Sandra and Woo and Gaia page (having been a Sandra and Woo fan for a few years – who knows why it took me this long to check out Gaia, but I love it even more than Sandra and Woo).

Ok, this confirms what I suspected; that Eldor did NOT expect Ryn, Alissa & co to be able to follow him through the portals. However, he hasn’t stopped being cautious; he’s still covering his backside, with the alarms & surveillance methods.

The fact that he’s not overly worried about the folks outside the door says that he’s confident that his security measures will keep them out long enough. So it’s coming down to the wire.

Extract Lili’s knowledge, probably. Eldor already admitted he can’t learn past a certain page in the book himself. OH and I bet He succeeds in the extraction and casts the spell, which would explain why everyone thinks Lili casts it, if he extracts the knowledge from Lili, he’ll probably cast like her too. Fooling everyone reading the bluestream to see who cast that world-ending spell.

That’s a brilliant idea and I second it.

But I’m also going to bet that something goes wrong in the end. Eldor has probably over-estimated his own ability to absorb Lili’s knowledge and/or magical ability.

Regardless of the cause, you can bet your booties that something will go drastically wrong, requiring Lilith and friends to go on a quest to fix it.

@ Melkior:
I also back up the Eldor’s going to get all magical abilities. And I think he has underestimated one thing: Viviana being the third person whose ability should be extracted. Remember that San, Lillith and Viviana were the three people connected to the heart tree?

I thought first that Lilith and Eldor would get extracted from the castle, but then it wouldn’t make sense that they have circles of different color and drawings. So my bet is the extraction is from Lilith to Eldor.

Hmm, he is hovering the sphere he used to harvest San’s power over the blue spot, so I guess he will either extract Lilith’s power (respectively her skill to cast the spell) into the sphere, too, or he will extract San’s power from the sphere and give it to Lilith to fuel the big spell he wants her to cast. It is quite certainly not “extracting” them from the Castle, we have seen Eldor open teleportation portals before, this works differently.

Hints that might speak for extracting Lilith’s power:
– “You don’t have to know” sounds menacing, if he’s just going to power her up, why doesn’t he say so
– Taking control of the spell himself would certainly be safer for Eldor than teaching Lilith to break all barriers and then giving her the power of TWO insanely strong spellcasters. She would now definitely be a menace to him if she decided to turn on him
– the red spot might be a hint at redstream (and thus harmful) Magic

Hints that might speak for empowering Lilith:
– Harvesting a skill just like that seems odd, especially since it has been hinted multiple times that Eldors inability to cast the spell himself is not a matter of raw magical power and that he expects Lilith to do better because she is extraordinary talented and skilled with shield Magic. It seems to be something that takes understanding, knowing what you do. That shouldn’t be something you can just extract into a sphere and then use without bothering to learn it yourself. He’ll need Lilith to do the spellcasting.
– If he could harvest a skill, why hasn’t he just harvested Lilith’s learning skills and then used them to learn the spell himself, instead of pressuring an enemy to learn the spell with the risk of her plotting against him.
– From what we have seen with San, that device is a “mana” harvester. It would be an oddly overpowered multifunctional Gimmick if it now could harvest learned skills, too. Besides, it has already been filled (blue Color)
– From what we have seen with San, the device is usually shoved into someones chest to harvest something from the victim, so it would be reasonable to assume that using it with those different coloured standing points has a different purpose.

I’m more interested in the fact that he seems to have a smartphone-like device. Maybe I have just been inattentive, but I don’t recall that particular aesthetic appearing much before now. The stasis room was also tech-y, but this is the first personal-device scale I recall seeing.

I must admit, it felt a little out of place to see this guy pull out a smart phone.

Also, my theory is that the “extraction” is that the spell is going to extract all the knowledge she’s gained and give it to him. That’s how he’s become such a powerful mage: by literally stealing knowledge.

@ Jack:
You can’t just link to TVTropes like that without any warning ;_;

What do you mean, without any warning? Don’t you look at the link address before you click on a link? If not, you are setting yourself up as a malware delivery agent’s dream, sir/madam. The link address showed ‘tvtropes’ quite clearly, and I knew what I was potentially getting into before I went there. Admittedly, that warning was the only thing that kept me from several hours of lost time…. 🙂

So close now I think, and so many good theories. I tend to think he’s powering her up to cast the spell. I don’t recall us seeing any evidence of being able to transfer HOW to perform a spell like that…seems like a mechanic that we’d have heard of.

There are two options here:
1: Eldor and Lilith are going to be extracted from the castle and to another location.
2: Eldor is extracting Lilith’s power.
IMO, if he were planning on extracting her power, I think he’d do to her something similar to what he did to San, rather than just expect her to be compliant. Cue the group busting in on them just as they’re about to leave?

There’s an Option 3, actually.

3. It’s coming from the phone, so possibly the people he’s watching said that.

@ Jack:
BlackDragonSlayer wrote:
There are two options here:
1: Eldor and Lilith are going to be extracted from the castle and to another location.
2: Eldor is extracting Lilith’s power.
IMO, if he were planning on extracting her power, I think he’d do to her something similar to what he did to San, rather than just expect her to be compliant. Cue the group busting in on them just as they’re about to leave?
There’s an Option 3, actually.
3. It’s coming from the phone, so possibly the people he’s watching said that.

There’s also a 4th option: That Eldor is going to take the power he previously siphoned out of San, and pump it into Lilith, temporarily giving her enough extra ‘oomph’, to be able to do what he wants.

I’m just going to point out I’m in the “San’s magic into Lilith” camp on this one. I mean, it’s not impossible that he would just want to take Lilith’s magic and knowledge, but the idea of extracting knowledge is still farfetched in the magic system as we’ve seen it so far. If he could do that, he’d have just done it with Isaac. And if it’s just the magic, then there would not have been a point to train Lilith.

Plus, there’s the fact that he’s using the sphere, combined with the way it’s applied differently from before (Floor seals vs implant). If he could just use this method to extract both the magic and knowledge from San, there’d be no reason to do the much slower, and less effective, “implant method”.

So it seems more plausible that he’s powering up Lilith. It also works story-wise, as it gives Lilith the ultimate opportunity to double cross him, exactly as she had planned.

I think he’s going to extract San’s magic from it into Lilith and this will give Lili the energy required to cast the time suspension shield-breaking spell (which is almost certainly a 10th level spell that even Eldor can’t break).

THIS. Finally someone said it.

Why would Eldor waste so much time teaching Lili if he were to take away her magic? So, yeah, that theory goes out the window.

I also doubt the sphere being able to transfer knowledge, because it makes no sense for 2 reasons:

1. If it were only a matter of knowledge, then Eldor could easily have just let Lili read the book and transfer her knowledge from its pages before having her actually master any spell, since with the knowledge alone he’d have been able to do so without her.

2. Again, if knowledge was all you needed to be able to cast a super powerful spell, Eldor wouldn’t have gone through trying to breed the most capable mage ever under the Great Tree and everything. Lili is special, she was conceived for higher types of spells Eldor couldn’t even dream of casting.

I was talking about why that sphere was meant to power Lili up for the spell she has to cast and not give Eldor power/knowledge so that he can break the shield himself. What you just said makes no sense with what I said.

@ Paeris Kiran:
Even if you meant that whatever Eldor takes from the Spirit Source makes him more powerful and capable than Lili, it still doesn’t change any of what I said: that Lili is currently more powerful than Eldor and can cast spells he can’t. If he gets some crazy power boost after taking what’s beyond the shield, it’s a whole new situation.

Eldor’s surveillance camera thingie has a pretty narrow image. It looks like he only sees Fabius and Arty, and not the whole group of at least nine people that are actually there? That might influence his decision on what to do first.

He does say these guys, that leaves it ambiguous about whether or not he realizes the whole crew is down there – including Sandril with the Sword of Arathor and a rapidly rejuvenating San – or just the two guys.